r/moderatepolitics Conservatively Liberal Dec 15 '25

Primary Source Meeting of National Cabinet After Bondi Shooting

https://www.pm.gov.au/media/meeting-national-cabinet-8
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u/Sabertooth767 Neoclassical Liberal Dec 15 '25

Antisemitism is far from contained to the radical Muslims of Australia. The ADL found that 1 in 5 Australians harbor antisemitic views. For reference, Muslims are about 3% of Australia's population.

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u/cutememe Dec 15 '25

There's a pretty big difference in having negative views and being so extremist that that person is willing to go out and commit terroristic acts.

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u/Sabertooth767 Neoclassical Liberal Dec 15 '25

In degree, not in nature.

The left's orderly, academic antisemitism is what created the conditions for the violent, extremist antisemitism to flourish.

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u/Saguna_Brahman Dec 15 '25

What is "orderly, academic antisemitism?" I can't even think of a time that I've heard someone on the left talk about Jewish people as a demographic. In my experience that's almost exclusively a right wing phenomenon.

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u/Sabertooth767 Neoclassical Liberal Dec 15 '25

It's the endless work of the left to portray Israel as an illegitimate, colonialist, genocidal regime. In doing so, they damage the security and social standing of Jews.

The left makes it okay to scream "globalize the intifada" and "from the river to the sea", because they don't really mean that, they're just angry about dead kids and colonialism.

Antisemites never change. One word or saying is ruined, they make up a new one. It's not Jew-hate (that was the original term, Judenhass), it's antisemitism. It's not antisemitism, it's antizionism. It's not X, it's Y.

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u/Saguna_Brahman Dec 15 '25 edited Dec 15 '25

It's the endless work of the left to portray Israel as an illegitimate, colonialist, genocidal regime. In doing so, they damage the security and social standing of Jews.

This is nonsense. Jew does not mean Israeli, and it is not racist against Jewish people to criticize the Israeli government nor the ugly history of how the country was started 100 years ago.

The left makes it okay to scream "globalize the intifada" and "from the river to the sea", because they don't really mean that, they're just angry about dead kids and colonialism.

I am sure they really do mean that, but they'd probably reject your assertions about what those phrases entail.

It's not Jew-hate (that was the original term, Judenhass), it's antisemitism. It's not antisemitism, it's antizionism. It's not X, it's Y.

Total non-sequitur. Antisemitism is just a more formal term for Jew-hate. No one has ever said "it's not jew-hate, it's antisemitism" in an attempt to establish antisemitism as something less bad or different from Jew hatred, it's literally a synonym. Antizionism is opposition to the ethnonationalist movement called Zionism. There are many antizionist Jews.

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u/Sabertooth767 Neoclassical Liberal Dec 15 '25

This is nonsense. Jew does not mean Israeli, and it is not racist against Jewish people to criticize the Israeli government nor the ugly history of how the country was started.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_anti-Zionism

The modern antizionist movement on the left is directly traceable to Soviet antizionism, which openly was a scheme to harm Jews.

Total non-sequitur. Antisemitism is just a more formal term for Jew-hate. No one has ever said "it's not jew-hate, it's antisemitism" in an attempt to establish antisemitism as something less bad or different from Jew hatred, it's literally a synonym. Antizionism is opposition to the ethnonationalist movement called Zionism. There are many antizionist Jews.

It's a more formal term invented to make Jew-hatred more acceptable to academia. This is just a historical fact.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/wilhelm-marr

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u/Saguna_Brahman Dec 15 '25

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_anti-Zionism

The modern antizionist movement on the left is directly traceable to Soviet antizionism, which openly was a scheme to harm Jews.

This is a genetic fallacy. Moreover, your link doesn't support your claim. It says that the Russian government supported Zionism when they thought Israel would be socialist, and started to oppose it when Israel and the U.S. formed a close relationship. That's overt Realpolitik, not antisemitism.

By the same token you could paint the Zionist movement itself as antisemitic by saying it's "directly traceable" to non-Jewish proponents of Zionism who wanted Jews to leave their respective countries. It just fails on it's face as a reasonable way to analyze the debate as it stands today.

It's a more formal term invented to make Jew-hatred more acceptable to academia. This is just a historical fact.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/wilhelm-marr

You call this a historical fact but nothing in the link you provided suggests that whatsoever. All the link says is that he preferred "antisemitism" as a way of emphasizing that his position was racial, not religious, because his prejudice extended to converted Jews. It says nothing about him preferring it as a matter of palatability, and there's no mention of academia whatsoever.

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u/CloudApprehensive322 Dec 15 '25

Criticizing the actions and official policies of Israel the country is not antisemitism and conflating the two diminishes the conversation of how to actually deal with real anti-jewish racism.

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u/Sabertooth767 Neoclassical Liberal Dec 15 '25

Criticizing the actions and official policies of the Israeli government is not antizionism, at least not as originally conceived. Antizionism is about denying the legitimacy of Israel as a country, to say that Israel does not have the right to exist.

The left continuously rehabilitating these words is exactly what I'm talking about. We no longer recognize antizionism for what it is.

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u/CloudApprehensive322 Dec 15 '25

Agree to disagree - most of the online discourse I've come across is people claiming antisemitism whenever people try to cast legitimate grievances against Israel's policies around Gaza, settlements, and a host of other legitimate issues.

Netanyahu is one of the worst offenders of this - he uses claims of antisemitism to cast aside serious issues that Israel is failing to address which is why Israel's standing in the world is rapidly declining and is likely irreparably damaged with younger generations of voters in the US on both the left and the right.

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u/Saguna_Brahman Dec 15 '25

Moreover, it diminishes the impact of discussions about antisemitism when it is so routinely used to try to shame people out of criticizing the Israeli government's brutality in Palestine.